Corvus

by Paul Kearney

  “It will take more than an idea to scale the walls of Machran.”

  “Oh, I know. Parmenios is working on it. For a fat little man with inky fingers, he has some ideas that would startle you.” Corvus turned to walk away.

  “Best continue with my rounds. I have not yet spoken to Ardashir this evening...” He paused, turned about. “Rictus, do you know why Fornyx hates me?”

  The question took Rictus off guard. “I -”

  “Because he loves you, and he thinks I have brought you to this by threat of death. You and I know different. There is nowhere in the world you would rather be right now than here with this army.”

  Corvus raised a hand, almost like a salute, and then walked off into the darkness.

  IN THE DAYS of marching that followed, the land rose under their feet and the rain began to ease. They came upon signs of the retreating League army: broken wagons, dead mules and discarded items of personal gear littering the roadside.

  With the improvement in the weather the men’s spirits lifted, and they made better time. By now, all the food that they had raided from the League camp’s stockpiles had been eaten, and they were on short rations. Corvus finally sanctioned a series of foraging expeditions, led by the mounted troops of the Companions. The two thousand cavalry split up into half a dozen strong columns and criss-crossed the countryside for pasangs on either side of the Imperial road.

  They were gone for several days, though couriers were sent back to the main body by Ardashir to keep Corvus informed of any enemy movements he had sighted.

  The army had become a vast, hungry, short-tempered horde, kept in check by the personality of its leader and his senior officers. Those who had campaigned before were philosophical about the shortages, but the new conscripts were especially restive. Watching Demetrius at work in the camp during the evenings, prowling his lines like a cyclopean schoolmaster, Rictus was reminded of his own efforts to keep the Ten Thousand in check on their long march west. It was like holding a wolf by the ears.

  Ardashir’s columns returned in time for the first lowland snow of the winter, a skiffle of white that was soon trampled into the earth by the passing thousands.

  His horse-soldiers made their way into camp on foot, leading their mounts, for the big animals were weighed down with the pickings of the countryside round about. Herds of goats and cattle and pigs trotted with them, and that night the army feasted as though it were a festival; the men erected spits above their campfires and gorged on fresh meat, baked flatbreads, and the fragrant green oil of the Machran hinterland. Morale lifted, and centons gathered about the night-time fires began to talk of the riches of Machran and what their share of them might be.

  Arkadios hove into view on their horizon, and the army formed up for battle before its walls. The usual terms were offered, and accepted with stiff formality by what remained of the city’s Kerusia.

  But it was a hollow gain. The fighting men of the city had left for Machran, along with a large part of the population. Arkadios was a shell of itself, and the garrison that Corvus left there was met with sullen hostility. The woman of the city spat at the soldiers of Corvus, and assured them that their stay would be short.

  The army marched on, making good time now, and the conscript spears were at last beginning to cohere in their new morai. They kept pace with the veterans, listened to their stories, and began to take something like pride in themselves. After all, they were part of something grand and important, witnesses to one of the great moments of history.

  More than that, they were now part of an army which had a tradition of victory. The Macht had been fighting amongst themselves for time out of mind; it was no unnatural thing to make war against their own kind. And they were at least on the winning side.

  They had not yet considered where victory might take them, or what it might do to the world they knew.

  Corvus was hurling the army across the hinterland like a spear. On all sides, cities whose men had been bloodied in the battle of Afteni stood unconquered, but he ignored them all, even ancient Avennos to the south. He had momentum now, and they were shackled by the inertia of their defeat.

  Ardashir’s foraging columns reported no sign of organised resistance, in the lands round about. The hinterland cities had shut their gates and were awaiting events. They were waiting to see what would happen before the walls of Machran.

  RICTUS AND HIS Dogsheads were in the van with the Igranians as usual, when a mounted patrol came cantering down the long slope ahead and reined in just in front. Corvus was there, and Ardashir, the two of them as bright-eyed as if they had been drinking.

  Corvus threw up a hand. “Rictus, come forward. There’s something over the hill you have to see!

  Fornyx, pass word down the line - all senior officers to the front of the column at once.”

  Fornyx raised a hand. “Off you go,” he said to Rictus. “Don’t keep the little fellow waiting.”

  “Go piss up a rope, Fornyx,” Rictus said, and took off up the hillside at a trot, his heavy shield banging on his back.

  He stopped, gasping, at the crest of the hill. A knot of horsemen had gathered there, and Corvus had dismounted. Rictus knew the spot - there was a stone waymarker here at the side of the road.

  Machran loomed in the distance, a vast stain upon the land, the smoke from ten thousand hearths rising up to cloud the air above it. A famous view - Ondimion’s plays had scenes set on this spot, and Naevius had made a song about it.

  Corvus and Ardashir stood marvelling at the sight.

  “Machran at last,” Corvus said. “After all this time.”

  Rictus suddenly realised. “You’ve never seen it before.”

  “Never - just read the plays and heard the songs and listened to men speak of it over their wine. I have maps of this city; I know its geography as though it were written across my dreams. I know the men who rule it, their names and families. But this is the first time I have seen it for myself - Ardashir too. I have been travelling years to stand at this spot, Rictus.”

  “I wish you joy of the sight,” Rictus said with a smile. Here was the boy again, alight with the wondrous marvels of the world. There was something... unspoilt about Corvus. It was more than the mere enthusiasm of youth - it was a kind of appetite. He would always find the new experiences of his life to be vivid and memorable and worth the cost, like a man who has a fine nose for wine, who finds in it subtleties and fragrances that others miss. What was the line Gestrakos had used? Eunion was fond of quoting it.

  “A man who has a passion will always find life to his taste,” Rictus said aloud.

  Corvus turned to him at once. “A man who cares for nothing is a man already dead,” he said, finishing the couplet. “Rictus, you surprise me. I had not thought you a philosopher.”

  “A friend quoted me that, a long time ago.”

  “Then he was a wise man. For soldiers, the sayings of Gestrakos are a window on our lives.”

  The head of the column reached them, and Fornyx raised a hand to halt the Dogsheads. Behind them, the line of marching men ran as far as the eye could see, and the weak winter sun ran along it, raising sparks and flashes off spearheads, helms, the brazen faces of shouldered shields.

  “We are what - four pasangs from the walls?” Corvus estimated. “I will pitch the command tent on the slope ahead. Rictus, your men shall bivouac forward a pasang, and Druze’s Igranians with you. The rest will file in behind. I must inspect the line of the walls close-to before I decide how to post the rest of the army.”

  “They’ve seen us,” Ardashir said. “Look; they’re closing the gates.”

  Rictus could just make out the fall of shadow in the wall as the massive South Prime Gate was slowly pushed shut in the distance. It was something he had never seen before: Machran shutting its gates. He looked at the endless snake of the high fortifications running across the land for pasangs, and shook his head at the thought of assaulting such a place.

  “The countryside is em
pty,” Ardashir said, shading his pale eyes with his hand. “There’s not a man or a beast to be seen for pasangs. It would seem Karnos has prepared the city somewhat.”

  “I expected no less,” Corvus said. He mounted his horse, and the animal - a coal-black gelding which made him look small as a child on its back - threw up its head and snorted as it caught his mood.

  “Bring up the baggage train, and deploy the army along this ridge, just in case he wants to come out.”

  “He won’t come out,” Rictus said.

  Corvus nodded. “I know - but we must show willing, and besides, it’s a grand thing to see an army file into line of battle. It will give the men on those walls something to think about.”

  He bent and patted the neck of the restive gelding, crooning to it with words of Kefren. Then he straightened and flashed a wide grin at them all.

  “Brothers,” he said, “today the siege of Machran begins.”

  SEVENTEEN

  THE GATES CLOSE

  KARNOS STOOD ON the heights of South Prime Tower, in whose bowels the great gate was grinding shut, groaning and screeching like a sentient thing. There were two dozen men down there with their shoulders set to it, and half a dozen more were ladling olive oil over the seized up hinges.

  To left and right, the walls of the city were crowded with people, thousands of whom had climbed the battlements to catch a sight of the army forming up in the distance. For months it had been a mere idea to them, a subject for gossip and speculation and argument. Now it was there, assembling on the lip of the great bowl-shaped vale in which Machran stood. A man might walk briskly from the walls to the front ranks of the enemy in half an hour.

  It had come to this at last, this brutal reality.

  Dion and Eurymedon stood beside Karnos on the tower’s topmost outpost. Two old men who looked even older this bright winter’s day as the undefeated army of Corvus deployed in line of battle before the city, as if to taunt them.

  Behind the trio of Kerusia members were Murchos of Arkadios, whose city was already lost, and Tyrias of Avennos, or Scrollworm to his friends. Kassander was down at the gates, cursing and cajoling the men working there.

  “I do not know what he is thinking,” Dion said, and there was the quake of age in his voice. “He forms up as though we’re about to give him battle.”

  “Or invite him in,” Murchos grunted, striding forward to lean on the grey stone of the battlement. He rubbed shards of snow off the stone irritably. “Arrogant bastard. He means to begin the investment right here and now, in the middle of winter.”

  “He has never been one to dawdle,” Karnos said. “Ah, the impetuousness of youth.”

  “Let him sit there while the snow comes down on him, and see how he likes it,” Tyrias said. “He’s overreaching himself. We can sit here all winter and watch him shiver.”

  “Have the messengers gone out?” Eurymedon asked. He was a cadaverous, grey-bearded man with a long red nose. He looked as though he either had a cold, or liked to stave one off with wine.

  “They went out last night,” Karnos said with a touch of impatience. “What good they will do us remains to be seen.”

  “They’re a fart in the wind,” Murchos said. “Those who are willing to fight are already here within the walls. The rest will wait on events. There will he nothing done now until the spring, perhaps even later.”

  “Agreed,” Karnos said. “We’re on our own, brothers, for a few months at least. We put up a good showing through the winter, bleed this boy’s nose for him a little, and the hinterland cities will get over their fright and see that their fate rests here with us as surely as if they were standing on these stones.”

  “There are many cities that would like to see Machran humbled,” Eurymedon said with a sniff.

  “We’ll see how they feel once this conqueror’s foraging parties start faring afield for supplies,” Karnos told him. “Once their granaries get raided a few times, things will turn around, you mark my words.”

  He hoped he sounded more convincing to the others than he did to himself.

  ALL AFTERNOON THE army of the conqueror marched and counter-marched. When his challenge was not taken up, Corvus put his host into camp square across the Imperial road, and as the winter afternoon dwindled swiftly into night, so the people of the city looked out to see a second city come to life in a thousand gleaming campfires to the south and east.

  Stragglers from the outlying farms hammered on the East Prime Gate that night and pleaded to be admitted to the city, but were denied entry for fear that they were in the pay of the enemy. They were told to try the Mithannon Gate, which was farthest away from Corvus’s camp, and they cursed the men on the walls and held up their children to show the cautious gatekeepers. The Goshen road was cut, a mora of spearmen encamped across it, and their farms were being raided for food and livestock. If they stayed outside the walls they would starve, they shouted up. They were told to wait for daylight, and try the Mithannon, and some kind soul threw a few flatbreads and a skin of wine down to them.

  Karnos remained on the walls until well after dark, unwilling to be seen to leave before the city crowds. Eventually the numbers on the walls thinned with the advent of night and the growing chill in the air, and soon there was no-one about the battlements except the armoured men whose job it was to walk them.

  Kassander joined him. His face was thinner than it had been, but he still had the slow easy smile which belied’the quick workings of his mind.

  “I’ll be bored to death before this thing is done,” Karnos said. “Especially if the Kerusia keeps those two ancient vultures hanging at my heels.”

  “Anyone would think they didn’t trust you,” Kassander said.

  “They’re afraid. Frightened men feel a need to try and know everything. When they were ignorant they were happier.”

  “Then from the sounds in the streets, there are a lot of ignorant people abroad tonight. Can you hear them?”

  Karnos nodded. “The Mithannon is teeming like a puddle full of spawn. The incomers from Arkadios and the other cities are intent on seeing the fleshpots while there’s still some flesh to be had.”

  “It’s what men do.”

  “And a damned fine idea!” Karnos exclaimed. He clapped Kassander on the shoulder. “Join me for dinner. Bring your sister. I’ll have Polio hunt out the good wine. We’ll get drunk and I’ll make an arse of myself - it’ll be like old times.”

  Kassander smiled. “I accept your gracious invitation.”

  “Good! I’ll ask Murchos and Tyrias too. Murchos can hold his wine and Scrollworm always has a poem or two on hand to help preserve civilization.”

  Kassander jerked his chin towards the distant campfires. “You don’t think he’ll try anything tonight?”

  “Tonight? That would be rude - he’s only just arrived. No, Kassander, our friends across the way will be busy making plans tonight. They’ve cut two roads into the city, and have three more to go. Tonight Corvus will be talking to his friends as we will be, plotting our destruction. And if they’ve any sense, they’ll be doing it with a drink in their hands too. I’ll have Gersic stay on the walls and report to us later on; he’s too excited to sleep tonight anyway.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Kassander drawled.

  KARNOS’S VILLA ON the slopes of the Kerusiad presented a fortress-like face to the world. Built around the fountain-courtyard, it looked in on itself rather than out at the city, a fact which Kassander had remarked upon more than once.

  In summer, Karnos threw parties centred on the fountain, and drunken guests had been known to end up in it. So had their host. But with the advent of winter the long dining tables were laid athwart the second hall, further inside, so that the sound of the falling water was lost, and in its place a fire spat and crackled on a raised stone platform at one end of the room, the smoke sidling out of a series of louvred slats in the roof. The long couches upon which the guests sat or reclined according to their preference were set out fa
cing one another, and slaves brought food to the diners on wooden platters and in earthenware dishes.

  It was the way the rich ate, and Karnos was nothing if not rich. He had never forgotten the communal pot-meals of the Mithannon, with a dozen people dipping their hands in the food at once and grabbing it by the fistful in an echo of the mercenary centos. He had sworn never to eat like that again.

  The meal was plentiful but plain. Karnos had developed expensive tastes in many things, but food was not one of them. He still relied on the country staples of bread, oil, wine, goat meat and cheese. The wine, however, was Minerian, one of the finest vintages ever trodden. Tyrias exclaimed as he tasted it, and held up his cup in salute. “As sieges go, this one certainly begins with promise,” he said.

  “I thought it fitting to mark the day,” Karnos told him. He raised himself up off his elbow and turned to the plainly clad woman seated apart from the men on an upright backless chair of black oak.

  “Kassia, are you sure you’re quite comfortable? These couches were made by Argon of Framnos -it’s like lying on a cloud.”

  The woman, a handsome dark-eyed lady with Kassander’s broad face, smiled at him. “It would scarcely be proper, Karnos. And besides, I’ve spent enough evenings here to know you will probably end this one on your back.”

  The men laughed, Kassander as loud as any. “My sister knows you too well, Karnos,” he said.

  “She does.” Karnos raised his cup to her. “Her honesty is as refreshing as her beauty is intoxicating.”

  “Your flattery is like the wine,” Kassia shot back. “It needs to be watered down a little.”

  “Forgive me, Kassia. When a man is so dazzled by the exterior, he sometimes forgets what treasures sparkle within.”

  “And now you’re becoming shopworn, Karnos. I have heard better lines in street-plays.”

  “It’s true I have not attended to the classics as much as I should. But it was Eurotas who said that a woman’s face holds no clue to her heart.”

  “Ondimion once said that to quote from drama was to sully the air with someone else’s fart.”